As EMC moves into 2015, the storage industry and investors will be watching to see how the company responds to pressures from investors to split the company, or merge or sell outright, and whether the company will end the year with a new hand at the tiller.

Corporate splits, data center ownership retreats, consolidations and software taking over for hardware are among the trends to watch for as the corporate and cloud data center moves into 2015 and beyond.

HP CEO Meg Whitman has taken the company in three short years from a financially battered behemoth with a questionable future to a stable company with a charged-up innovation engine. Here are the top 10 HP Stories of 2014.

Solution providers that build IT infrastructures will find fewer data centers to work in as their customers move operations to third-party providers. The number of data centers will soon slide, but the average data center size will continue to grow.

Lenovo, fresh off the heels of its acquisition of IBM's x86-based server business, is planning to capitalize on its growing infrastructure presence to change how it deals with managed services and cloud partners, including adding new financing and pay-as-you-grow options.

An early upgrade cycle for Windows Server 2003 helped SMB distribution stalwart D&H Distributing to report a 13.3 percent increase in sales to more than $2 billion for the six-month period ended Oct. 31.

The challenges for agents and VARs in the large business sector are numerous and include delivering simplicity, value and savings born out of consolidating communications providers and optimizing services.

IDC said at the NexGen Cloud conference that pressures on IT administrators to deal with ever-increasing mobility and data generation is causing data center administrators to look closely at when to add software-defined technology.